


These Nights to Come

by whittler_of_words



Series: Antebellum [2]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Found Family, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Intrusive Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 17:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5674444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whittler_of_words/pseuds/whittler_of_words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have never been one to keep the promises you make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Nights to Come

You have never been one to keep the promises you make.

It’s a problem, you think, or would be one if it applied to you in any way that matters.

_Be good_ , and _don’t swear. Play nice. Be careful. Don’t do that again._ All worthless. You’re not sure you’ve ever really understood; they’re just words, with no substance behind them, and yet people tend to get so upset when you go against your word. It’s not like anyone can ever claim it wasn’t expected. You have never really felt “bad” about it either, in any sense of that word in particular. And why should you? You don’t owe anybody a single breath, nevertheless an entire series of them strung together. Why should you care? 

No. Try again.

Here’s a better question:

why _do_ you care?

You’ve always prided yourself a little on being self aware. You may be an awful person, down to the very core of you, but you at least know exactly how and why you are broken and in which places, in every single little way. You are an awful person, but at least you don’t ever tell yourself otherwise. You’ve never pretended to be something you’re not.

Still. It...snuck up on you. That feeling.

Caring.

But then, you were the one who promised yourself you’d never care about anyone ever again, so you really should have expected this one.

You read in a book in Toriel’s library that monster souls are comprised of mercy, compassion, and love. You think that might be it. The reason it’s so easy. Easy to find yourself falling head first into an emotion you’ve tried so hard to strip from your bones; you wonder if that might actually make them cruel, in some weird, roundabout way, before realizing it’s their faults least of all.

You’ve tried very hard to be good, these past couple of weeks.

“It can’t be... _so_ urgent, can it?”

It’s a work in progress.

You hear Toriel sigh. “Of _course_ it is so urgent,” she says, testy in a way you never hear her when you or Asriel are in the room. “What about this issue makes you think it’s not?”

“I will ask Doctor Gaster to take the readings again,” Asgore suggests gently. “It’s probable that there was a mistake somewhere. I won’t put anyone into a panic until we’re more than sure.”

Another heavy sigh, and then quiet. 

You don’t move where you’re standing against the wall, your gaze fixed in front of you. You remember, when Asriel first took you to see the throne room in the excited way he does most things, you’d been confused about the lack of a door. For that matter, what was it with Dreemurrs and a lack of doors, anyway? Their home, and then the throne room- it didn’t make any sense to you.

It’s because doors are meant for keeping people out, Asriel explained to you, very seriously. And a good ruler never turns anyone away.

A good _anything_ probably doesn’t eavesdrop, but to your credit, that wasn’t your intention when you came here in the first place.

You count to five when they continue to not say anything, thinking that will be enough time to go in there to ask what you wanted to without it seeming like you were listening. You’re just pushing off the wall when Toriel speaks again.

“I am very worried,” she says, quietly. You slowly sink back against the brick. “I just- I do not know what we are supposed to do. What if Gaster’s readings are correct? Fifteen years? Is that all we have?” There’s the shuffling of cloth. “The humans do not trust us. We have attempted to negotiate treaty after treaty and still they turn us away! They watch our every movement like we are- _prisoners_ in our own home, there is no possible way we could get into this mountain without them taking it as an excuse to attack us outright.”

“I’m sure if we explained the situation they would see reason,” Asgore tries, but he sounds uncertain even to your own ears. “Are they even aware that Ebott is a volcano?”

“I doubt it.” Toriel sounds very tired. “They are farther from it than we are. But that does not matter. If it becomes active like he says it will, then none of this will matter. Even the human town would be inside the radius of the blast. If they would _listen_ , we could go inside and take steps to prevent disaster before it is too late, but...”

“But,” Asgore agrees. They both sound very tired.

You dig your nails into the mortar, staring at the ground at your feet. So it’s useless? Even if they manage to hold off the war, you’re all going to die anyways, in a volley of heat and flame and the anguish of knowing that it all could have been avoided if not for the _humans_. Toriel is right. They won’t listen. They hate monsters too much. Even if they did believe it, you wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to use it against them. Take measures to save themselves while forcing the monsters to live at the base of their death.

You bite your hand to keep yourself from laughing out loud. There’s no way you can ask Asgore and Toriel for anything now; you’re one of them, after all. You did this to them! They’re going to die because your race is a bunch of murderers and thieves--

“hey, kiddo,” comes a voice not two feet away, and you jerk back hard enough you hit your head on the brick.

“ _Fuck!_ ” you hiss. A hand searches your scalp for the bruise you know you’re going to be feeling for the rest of the day, and you glare at the skeleton in front of you. 

He’s a friend of Toriel’s, and kind of a friend of Asgore and Asriel by proxy you guess, so you’ve seen him around a bit, but you haven’t actually talked to him on account of going out of your way to not do so. His name is Sans. He’s always smiling. You dislike him on principle.

He’s smiling now.

“sorry, bud, didn’t mean to scare ya,” he says, shrugging. He removes a skeletal hand from the pocket of his jacket to jerk a thumb at the open doorway. “they busy?”

“How would I know,” you grumble. The look he gives you is steady.

“well, i figured if you were waiting out here, they must be seein’ someone else already. i was just on my way to talk to ‘em, actually.” He winks at you, then. Which is so entirely preposterous considering that his face is literally made of bone it kind of offends you. “y’know, we might as well go grab a bite to eat while we wait. what d’you say?”

You didn’t even tell him if someone is actually in there or not. But you don’t think you could just turn around and face the two Boss Monsters right now, and you have nothing better to do with your time anyway, with Asriel being at school and you not going to one at all. With how quickly and easily he offered to take you out, it occurs to you that he might not be telling the truth about why he came here, himself. But that’s fine. You could use some trouble right now either way.

“Alright,” you say. Sans bobs his head.

“cool. i’ve got just the place. follow me, i know a shortcut.”

He turns around and casually starts walking in the other direction, hardly even waiting for you. You almost shove your hands in the pockets of your own jacket before you realize that’d make you look like him, and you stubbornly clench them into fists at your sides. Sans turns

_exactly_ the wrong way, down the hall that leads into the house instead of right outside, and you hurry after him, opening your mouth to ask him where the hell he’s going--

It’s like blinking, but not, because you know you didn’t close your eyes. You might as well have, though, for all that the world sort of cuts out to black and then back again in the span of a second. You freeze in your tracks. You don’t know where you are.

You’re inside- somewhere. It’s warm. There are monsters, a good handful of them, sitting at a bunch of tables and booths arranged around the room, some of them eating, all of them talking. You recognize a couple of the dogs from the Canine Unit. None of them seem to notice your sudden appearance. Or if they do, they don’t show it. By the time your gaze finds Sans he’s already sitting down at the counter at the back of the room. He pats the seat next to him when he catches your eye. So he saved you one. How nice of him. Ducking your head in the hopes that no one else will try to talk to you, you walk across the room and sit on the stool.

What happens next is unholy.

The PPBBBBTTTTBTT that suddenly sounds through the air nearly makes you jump out of your seat, but you stiffen instead, hands fisted over the counter. A few monsters titter behind you. The whoopie cushion is an uncomfortable lump underneath you where it hadn’t been two seconds ago. A part of you is impressed that he managed it, but an even bigger part is mortified at the sudden attention you swear you can feel on your back, making your skin crawl, making your face hot, and you hate him, you were right to hate him, anger choking you up from the inside and you’re gonna fucking kill him til he’s nothing but chalky ash under your nails-

“oops,” he says, snapping you out of your thoughts. “sorry kid. shoulda warned ya. some weirdo likes to leave whoopie cushions on the seats.” He chuckles, mostly to himself you think, and waves down the elemental standing behind the other end of the bar. “what are you having?” he asks, turning to you on his stool. The bartender walks over and wipes at a cup passively.

You swallow the acid on your tongue once, twice. “A burger,” you finally answer, since you might as well. He holds up two fingers and the bartender nods and walks off to a back room somewhere. You pick at your nails, gritting your teeth and refusing to look up at him.

“sorry if that embarrassed you,” he finally says, surprising you, “i pull that on everyone when i bring ‘em here the first time, like a, uh. initiation. or something.” You make a face at your hands. His clothes crinkle softly as he shrugs. “you shoulda seen asgore’s face when i got him. haha, oh man. priceless.”

You peek at him out of the corner of your eye. His eyes are closed, chin resting on his hand. “...What’d he do?” you ask, but only begrudgingly. 

“turned really red,” he starts, “and then gave me this whole lecture on maturity and respect for authority and all that for about ten minutes. it was awful to sit through. i felt so caught.” He blinks open an eye at you, grinning in a way that seems more real. “and then he said, ha ha, just kidding. who knew our king was a troll, huh?”

You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling now too. That sounds like him. Or at least, you’d like to think you know him well enough to be able to say what he is or isn’t like. It’s barely been a month. What do you know?

The fire monster chooses that moment to walk back in with two plates in his hands, burgers on them both. They look good. They _smell_ good. You barely have the mind to tell him thanks before you pull one of them closer to you over the counter and start stuffing your face.

“thanks, grillbz,” Sans says, pulling the other plate closer. “Grillbz” nods and walks back to the other end of the counter again, leaving you two alone. “geeze, bucko, slow down,” Sans says, picking up his own food, “these burgs aren’t goin’ anywhere.”

“Yeah, they’re going in my mouth,” you tell him, but said mouth is kind of full so he probably doesn’t understand you. He laughs anyway.

“fair enough.” 

The whoopie cushion is barely on your mind anymore, focused as you are on systematically decimating your burger. You’re almost done when Sans speaks again, interrupting you mid bite. You look over to see he’s barely half finished with his. 

“so,” he says, “you’re chara, then.”

You look at him sidelong. “Sometimes.”

“oh yeah?” he snorts, seeming more amused than anything. “what’s that supposed to mean?”

You don’t actually know. It was a stupid thing to come out of your mouth. You don’t know why you said it. You shrug, hoping to maybe play it off as you being mysterious and vague and cool (which you are anyways, so suck it), and take another bite of your burger to symbolize your lack of anything else to say on the matter.

“well, sometimes-chara,” he says, taking his cue, and you roll your eyes at the name, “i’m guessin’ you know who i am already, but i’m sans. the skeleton,” he continues, and you huff.

“I couldn’t tell,” you shoot back. “But yeah, sure. Pleasure to meet you and whatever.”

Sans waves a hand dismissively. “nah. save that for when you see my bro. he’s the one it’s a real pleasure to meet.”

“Papyrus? I already met him.” You shrug. “He’s pretty cool, I guess.” He’s a bit too loud for your tastes, boisterous and optimistic in a way that settles oddly in your stomach, but he also brought you an entire tupperware container of welcome spaghetti that one time, so you guess he’s okay.

“heh. isn’t he?” Sans settles a little in his seat. “glad you think so. y’know. i’ve got to admit. i didn’t really think you were the type.”

That earns him a raised eyebrow. “Type for what?”

“making friends.”

You bark out a laugh before you can stop yourself. “I’m not.” The way he just looks at you for a moment makes you think he was expecting you to get offended, but you just take another bite of your burger and stare right back. 

“...maybe not,” he says, “but papyrus doesn’t seem to think so,” which makes you blink, but he continues on before you have the chance to say anything. “like, okay, imagine my surprise when he comes home one day and starts goin’ on about how there’s this monster kid he’s never seen before hangin’ with the royal family. but hey, you know, the dreemurrs are a popular bunch, it’s not as if they don’t have company from time to time, right? nothin’ to really get so excited over. now, imagine my surprise when he comes home another day talking nonstop about how it turns out that monster was actually a human the entire time, and the human ate all the spaghetti he brought ‘em, and that must mean they really want to be his friend, y’know?”

You shift in your chair. You think you know where this is going. “If you’re trying to give the whole break his heart and I break you speech,” you interrupt, “you could just cut to the chase.”

“what?” he blinks. “no, i’m just sayin’ you surprised me is all. figured you weren’t the type to put effort into these things.” He pauses. “but yeah, that too i guess.”

“It’s rude to assume things about people like that, you know,” you tell him, even if he is right.

“just like eavesdropping, huh?” he retorts, and, shit.

“I wasn’t--”

“don’t lie to me, kid,” he says, winking again. “not when we’re having such a nice chat.”

You grimace at the remnants of your burger. You suddenly don’t feel like eating it anymore. You shove the rest of it in your mouth out of spite. “You telling?” you ask, your mouth full again, but you know he understands you just fine.

“nah. the way i figure it, hearing stuff you don’t want to is punishment enough.” He polishes off his own burger, finally. “there’s a reason they don’t tell you these things, kiddo.”

“I wasn’t _trying_ to sneak around,” you snap. “It just- happened,” you finish, lamely, because it sounds like a dumb half-baked excuse even to your own ears, and you _know_ it’s the truth. Sans doesn’t seem convinced. You’re pushing around the crumbs on your plate with a finger when something occurs to you, and you narrow your eyes at him. “How do _you_ know what they were talking about?”

“lucky guess.” You glare at him. He begins to sweat. “uh. look, i told you i was goin’ up there to talk to them, didn’t i? maybe it had something to do with that.”

That doesn’t make any sense. From the way Toriel and Asgore were talking, it sounded like no one else but them and Gaster knew about Ebott’s impending eruption at all. How could he possibly know about it enough to go up and seek an audience them in the first place? It’s obvious that he’s hiding something from you, or at least not telling the whole truth, and you only realize you’ve been staring at him silently for several long moments when sweat continues to bead on his weird head.

A part of you wants to split open his ribcage until his secrets spill out of his chest like dust, but you’re self-aware enough to know that’s a weird thought to have. “Whatever,” you say instead, turning back to your empty plate. He seems to relax a little. Neither of you care to break the silence that forms, until, “Have you heard of the legends about Mt Ebott?”

“huh?” he says, sounding confused. You resist the urge to roll your eyes again. “uh, no, can’t say i have.”

“Seriously? They’re everywhere. Like,” you start, “there’s one about how this giant accidentally cut his thumb off while he was cooking and it ended up forming the mountain when nobody was able to move it. And then another about how this bit of earth hated its neighbors so much that it wanted to grow so high that it never had to talk to anyone again, but it gave up halfway through. But there’s one,” you continue, jabbing your finger at the crumbs and ignoring the vaguely uncomfortably way he’s shifting in his seat, “about these monsters, that are trapped, way down in the earth. Not, like, monsters monsters, like you guys. Demons. Dozens of them. And they are all so, so angry, about everything, and filled with hate for the entire universe, and the only thing keeping them from destroying it is being trapped under the ground.” 

You lick your finger, dabbing it at the pile of crumbs you accumulated and sticking it in your mouth before moving on. “So, these demons, right, they want to get out, and destroy everything. So they came up with this plan. They decided to team up, and chip away at the crust of the earth piece by piece, in one spot. But the seal that keeps them trapped makes it so the earth stretches a bit, yeah? And after thousands and thousands of years of going at this one spot with everything they have, they formed the mountain.”

“interesting,” he says, obviously uncomfortable now, but you’re not done yet.

“So they formed the mountain, but the thing is, the seal can’t hold forever,” you rush on, a little out of breath from talking so much, “and eventually they’re going to break through the top of the mountain and destroy- destroy everything, until there’s nothing left. But!” You turn to him, grinning, gesturing with your hands, and you think his eyes darken for a moment before flickering back. “But! The legend also says there’s, there’s a way to get them to stop, yeah? Like, not forever, not that long, but enough to buy a hundred more years, or something, so, for a long time, they would choose one, uh, sacrifice, I guess, and send them up to the mountain, and they would never come back down and everything would be okay.” You slap your palms down on the counter to accent your point. “You know? You sure you’ve never heard it before?”

“uh...” He blinks, slowly, which is interesting to watch. “uh. no. can’t say i have.”

“Huh.” You go back to dabbing at the crumbs again, shrugging. “Guess it’s a human thing, then.” Figures. Monsters probably don’t have legends like that. But you’ve heard that one enough times to have it driven into your memory; your parents had certainly been sure to repeat it enough for that, saying how maybe they should send you up there next, since you were so much like a demon anyway and they’d probably welcome you right in.

“y’know, uh,” he says, drawing your attention back to him, “pal. as nice as that sounds and all. i’m pretty sure there’s a way to fix all this without the whole human sacrifice deal. like, uh. talking out our problems. and maybe thinking outside a couple boxes.”

“Didn’t take you for an optimist,” you shoot, and that actually gets a snort out of him.

“what was it you said about assuming things about people again?” He waves a hand dismissively. “but i’m not. i’m a realist, kid. just ‘cause i think there’s a chance things’ll turn out okay doesn’t mean i’m making up hope where there is none.” he peers at you with one eye open. “ _that’s_ called pessimism.”

You don’t have anything to say to that. Probably because he’s right. You are a pessimist. You could never afford to be anything else. Sans sighs.

“look...if it’s really buggin’ you that much, talk to your folks about it. sure, they might be struggling with it too, but nothing’s ever completely a lost cause, especially when we’ve got people like them calling the shots. i’m not expecting you to take my word on any of this. but they’ll give it to you straight.”

“Easy for you to say.” You glare at him. “How am I even supposed to ask them?”

“you’re a smart kid. i’m sure you can figure it out. but, uh.” His grin widens a little bit. “you could always start with the truth.”

You roll your eyes hard enough for it to hurt. “Yeah, sure, like that ever--” It’s then that your brain really, fully catches up with the conversation from where it’d lagged a few moments behind, and you sit up straight in your chair suddenly enough that Sans almost jumps. “Wait. What did you just say?”

He gives you an odd look. “tell ‘em the truth?”

“No. No, you called them--” You cut off, staring at him, unable to make yourself finish the sentence.

He called them your folks. 

Like he hadn’t even thought about it. You hadn’t even thought about it at first. You swallow against the warm feeling in your chest, hoping to choke it out. It refuses.

“I need to go--” you nearly say _home_ and have to bite your tongue on the word; you can’t. You can’t. It’s not yours. “--back.” You swallow again. “I need to go back. Please.”

There’s that odd look again. But he nods, and makes to stand, and you don’t think about stuffing your hands in your pockets this time when you follow. He doesn’t say anything about paying for the meal. Maybe he has a tab.

“just think about talking to them, yeah?” he tells you after the shortcut back. He doesn’t wait for an answer before turning around and heading back the way he came, which is kind of disappointing; you have more than a few swears you haven’t had the chance to give much use yet. 

Asriel is in his room when you crack the door open and peek inside. He perks up, kicking his legs where he’s laying stomach-down on the floor doing homework, and you shut the door behind you before going over to collapse on his perfectly made bed.

“Howdy, Chara!”

“Ugh.”

“Had a good day?”

“ _Ugghh,_ ” you repeat, and roll around for a moment before sitting up and frowning, “yeah. I guess.” You turn so you’re frowning at him instead of the wall. “You do anything interesting today?”

“Not really.” He shrugs, going back to his homework. “School was pretty boring. We were supposed to get a visit from Undyne but apparently something came up.” He glances at you, smiling, “Things will be a lot more fun now that you’re back.”

“Maybe.” You deliberate for a moment before sliding down the bed and onto the floor across from him, folding your legs under you. He doesn’t say anything, and neither do you, simply picking at the sleeves of your jacket as you watch him work. His eyebrows are all scrunched up in the funny way they get sometimes when he’s concentrating really hard. You kind of want to reach over and smooth out the lines on his face, rearrange his features like putty until he’s smiling all bright and happy in the way he’s so good at, but you can’t help but feel like you’d get it all wrong. Maybe you’d mess it up bad enough that he couldn’t fix it. You really, really don’t want that, though. Lately it’s started to feel like his smile is the only thing that matters anymore. 

You won’t ruin it. You’d never forgive yourself if you tried.

“Chara,” he says, and carefully pries away your fingers from where they’d been digging into your arm through the sleeves. Shit. You pull your hand back, shoving them both underneath you until you’re sitting on them. “Is everything okay?” he asks. You’re too busy studying the neat scrawl on the papers in front of you to see what expression he’s wearing.

“Are we friends?” you ask, all of it coming out in a rush before you can think too much about stopping yourself. You regret it instantly, biting your tongue.

“What?” he says, and then “Of course!” He sits up, your eyes following the movement without you telling them to, and he mostly just looks confused. “Did you...did you not think we’re friends?”

“No!” You wince at the volume of your own voice, but he just blinks. “No, I- I just--” You’ve never been sure what it felt like, to have a friend, or at least someone who was willing to put up with sticking around you for more than a day or two at a time. It felt- presumptuous, and disrespectful, to say that your relationship could be described as anything close to “friendship”, even in your own head. You hesitate. “...I just never had a friend before.”

He stares at you wide-eyed, baffled. “ _Really?_ ” he breathes. “Oh, but- but that means--” his shoulders hunch up, hands fisted with the same excitement that widens his smile, “--that makes us best friends!”

That stops you. “Best...?” You trail off, and he nods, ears flopping.

“Yeah! It’s like, regular friends, but even better!” He spreads his hands to illustrate the splendor of his point. “Best friends are super close and do lots of extra fun stuff together and tell each other everything. So, if I’m your first friend, that means we have to be best friends. But only if you want,” he adds hastily.

Under most circumstances, you’d reject the idea immediately. Asriel is- nice, and sweet, in exactly all the ways you’re not. Surely there’s someone else better suited for the position of his Best friend. Someone who won’t hit him or call him names or try to make him mad just to see if they can. But there isn’t, is the thing; Asriel is nice, and sweet, but you’ve come to find that he’s also shy and sensitive and cries far too easily, which is enough of a condemnation already. His status as royalty doomed him. All the people he’s called his friends -- Undyne, Papyrus, Alphys, Sans -- they’re adults. People his parents work with. It occurs to you, suddenly, that you might not be the only one who’s never had a real friend before, either.

“I want to,” you say, and there’s that smile again. You hold out your hand. “Best friends.”

“Best friends,” he agrees, with such a grave tone you can’t help but smile yourself, and his hand is soft in yours. The warm feeling in your chest returns. It’s like if you swallowed one of Toriel’s flames, a flickering handful of gentle heat down your throat, except now you’re curious if that’s something you could actually do. The impulse to try is surprisingly easy to brush off. The feeling itself is not. You think you could burst apart if you let yourself.

He takes his hand back, returning to his homework, but his feet are kicking and he’s not even trying to fight his smile. You’re glad. You helped put that smile there, and the sense of accomplishment almost makes you dizzy.

You guess you should get this over with now, while he’s busy and you have the nerve.

“Are your parents still in the throne room?” you ask, standing. Asriel glances up at you.

“I don’t know about Mom, but I heard Dad come in earlier. Why?”

“Just need to ask them something.” You shrug, trying for flippant, and Asriel seems to buy it if the way he looks back down is any indication.

“Okay. Check the kitchen, he’s probably making tea.”

You snort a laugh. “Yeah, probably. Thanks.”

He hums in response and you shut the door behind you again when you exit the room. The click of the door is soft, but you can already feel your resolve weaking at the sound, and- no. You need to do this. Now, or you never will. 

You pad towards the other room, pulling your jacket tighter around yourself in a nervous habit you haven’t managed to break yourself out of. There are clinking sounds coming from the kitchen. Yeah, that’d be Asgore. Only the teapot sounds like that. You take a breath before stepping in.

Just like you suspected, the teapot is in his hands, enveloped by fire magic as he gets it to boil. His back is to you, facing the counter. He hums something under his breath. You stand there for a moment, frozen, suddenly unsure what to even say, what to do, how to ask what you need, and you nearly choke on the indecision. Just go for it already.

“Um,” you start, and Asgore jumps, nearly dropping the teapot; you jump too, surprised by his reaction. “Sorry!”

“Oh, dear, it’s alright,” he says, placing a hand over his chest. “You just startled me is all. It seems my hearing isn’t as sharp as it used to be.” He smiles down at you. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

Not what you came here for, but you’re not one to turn an offer like that down. You nod, and Asgore chuckles as he uses his free hand to take an appropriately sized mug from the cupboard. He hands it to you when it’s full and steaming, but not burning-- his tea never burns too bad when you drink it, no matter how long he heats the water for. It’s pretty neat. You immediately head over to the other end of the counter where the sugar is kept when it’s not in use, and Asgore continues to laugh as you dump spoonful after spoonful into your tea. He doesn’t tell you to stop, though, so you don’t until you’re satisfied.

“How is it?” he asks, once you’ve taken a sip.

“Good,” you answer, like always, because it’s always good, and you smile up at him. Your grin slips a little when you meet his gaze though, reminded as you are of why you came here in the first place when he’s smiling at you all kind and gentle like that. Your stomach rolls. You really don’t know if you can do this.

“Are you alright?” he asks, brows furrowed in concern. “Perhaps I’m wrong, but you seem a little distracted.”

“Um,” you say again, unable to lie to him but unable to tell him the truth and entirely unsure what to say; you stammer something out, complete nonsense not even you can parse, and Asgore cuts you off.

“Breathe,” he instructs. You do. “Take your time. There is no rush.”

You nod and bring your cup to your face, sipping at it in an effort to buy yourself a few more moments. Not that it would help. There’s not enough time in the world to figure out a way to say something that’s best said in a couple words, anyway. But the tea is warm, and it calms you enough that it doesn’t seem as impossible, now. Asgore waits patiently as the minutes tick by.

“Can I--” you start, and you nearly stop right there, but you refuse to wimp out now and push forward mostly out of spite, “can I stay?”

He blinks at you. “Pardon?”

No. He’s going to say no. You look over at the stove that no one ever uses, and then the floor, and then the cup in your hands, biting your lip. “Can I. Stay. Here.” A nervous laugh bubbles up from your throat, but it’s small, and you clamp down on it fast. “I, uh, I know you’ve been letting me live here for a while, and I’m really, really grateful, and I don’t want to overstay my welcome but I, I don’t want to, to--” You bite your lip again, making yourself stop. You’re getting too emotional. Tone it down. “I don’t...want to leave,” you continue, your voice shaking despite your best efforts. Your grip tightens knuckle white on the cup. “I would like to stay here. With you. And, and Asriel, and Toriel. Please don’t say yes because you think you have to,” you go on, squeezing your eyes shut, “I don’t want that. I don’t. But you guys are really nice, and I--” care about you, you don’t say. You can’t. You won’t manipulate him into this. “Please,” you say instead, even though you probably shouldn’t.

There’s silence for a moment. Two. Then, “Of course you may stay.”

Your eyes fly open. “What?”

He sets his cup on the counter, steam curling with the movement. You watch him wide-eyed as he kneels down to be more level to you. 

“I thought we might have this talk eventually,” he muses, “but, Chara, it was said before. We do not turn away any who don’t wish to leave.” He smiles at you, kindly. “Even with that said... And I speak for my wife and son on this, mind. It would be our utmost pleasure to welcome you more permanently into our home.”

You stare at him still, speechless. He regards you calmly, waiting, without any hint of impatience or humor in his eyes. “I-- you’re serious. You’re not joking?”

“No. Not in the least.” He bows his head for a moment. “Chara... I promise you. For as long as you remain here, my wife and I will take care of you as best we can. We can sit in the living room, telling stories...eating butterscotch pie...” He looks up at you again, and you think you can see some of the same hope you feel in him. “We could be like...like a family.”

You’re trembling, you realize, but he shifts just so in an invitation you can’t refuse and you throw yourself at him. He’s big and you’re, well, you’re not, and your arms could only ever hope to wrap halfway around him at all, but the way his arms envelop you completely more than makes up for it. The tea probably spills. You really don’t care.

His hands are strong enough to knock you across the room if he barely even thought about it, but they don’t jostle you at all as he pats your back. “There, there,” he says, his voice a deep rumble from where your face is pressed up against his chest. You realize you’re crying. “Everything is alright.”

Hands fisted into the fabric of his shirt, you take in a deep breath -- shuddering as it is -- wanting to remember this, daring yourself to forget. He smells like leaves. He smells like the earth. It’s appropriate, you think; he’s just as solid, like the ground underneath your feet, but still giving all the same, soft as upturned earth. He is very warm. You don’t want to let go, and he doesn’t make to, so you don’t. 

There’s a word in your mind. Niggling at you. Pushing insistently at the edges of your thoughts, wanting to be let in. You let it close, turning it over, testing it, tasting it, smiling bigger than you ever remember against Asgore’s chest.

_Home._

It tastes sweet.

**Author's Note:**

> is that...plot i see? hmmmm!!!! :^)


End file.
